Upgrade to Sky+ Do I still need DVD recorder

[Wookie_27]

I currently have a Thomson freeview box with Top up TV, and also a Pansonic e55 dvd recorder. I have decided to upgrade to SKY+, and cancel my top up tv and get rid of the freeview box.

My question is do I still really need my DVD recorder ?. I have a seperate DVD player so the only other function I use the DVD-R for is for transferring my Digital camcorder stuff onto disc. However I have now brought a DVD-burner for my PC which also has a firewire connector so i can use this instead along with the added editing features.

I was never impressed that much with the playback on the panny-e55 anyway, but is the recording quality on the SKY+ box comparable ?

I belive that you can record from the sky+ onto a DVD-r but cannot see myself using this much. From the above it looks like I have answered my own question !! but would appreicate any other comments as to whether I still need the DVD-R

Cheers

 

[Too Tall]

In answer to your E55 Vs Sky+ question:
Sky records the signal AS IS so you have no loss of quality over live transmition. I don't know what the E55 is like but with Sky+ it is impossible to tell the differnece between recordings and live TV.

As far as do you keep it:
I guess you need to ask yourself 3 questions.
Will I ever need to keep more than 20 hours (standard box) of recordings at any one time?
Do I ever record and keep films off Sky?
Do I ever lend recordings to friends?

If you answer yes to any of these you need to keep the DVD recorder.

I bought a second hand Phillips 880 for £80 so that I can record stuff off my Sky+ to lend to ppl or to take a program around a friends house to watch.

 

[dmw]

I used to capture my camcorder footage onto PC and edited it using Adobe Premiere then had to wait hours for it to encode to MPEG using TMPGenc or similar before authoring as a DVD. Also, the faffing around in Premiere to do pretty cross-fades and titles was taking forever.

I now use my DVR Recorder to capture DV from my camcorder direct onto DVD in MPEG format. If I do want to do some editing I still record to DVD first then do everything in MPEG encoded files. It's still a bit of a faff but gets the job done quicker.

I also have sky+, got that first then the DVD Recorder primarily to archive stuff I want to keep.

 

[Wookie_27]

Many thanks for the replies..

I think based on the info above I will store the DVD-R and trial the SKY+ box. If im happy with that Ill sell it on.

 

[dmw]

Also sometimes you just run out of room on the sky+ box before you've had time to watch it - with DVD recorder you can save it to DVD to watch later and free up space on sky+.

... or you could just upgrade your sky+ like everyone else ...